Re-cataloguing GRAUN-publications
Wednesday 3 February 2010
Every once in a while a monograph is published in which a musicologist gives an overview of a composer’s oeuvre. When he categorizes all compositions thematically (and/or chronologically) in an authoritative way, provides them with a numbering and presents their incipits (introductory measures), we speak of a thematic catalogue.
The music library’s most recent acquisition in this category is the Graun-Werkverzeichnis (GraunWV) by Christoph Henzel. In two volumes he categorizes the works of the Graun brothers. Johann Gottlieb (1702/03-1759) wrote mainly instrumental music, while Carl Heinrich (1703/04-1771) preferred composing music for the human voice.
Many manuscripts and copies exist with the name Graun on them. The catalogue’s compiler Henzel undoubtedly has put much research in determining whether these can be ascribed to one of the brothers. For this he used a fine-toothed comb which led to a subtle classification.
Section A comprises the works by Johann Gottlieb, section B those by Carl Heinrich. The works in category C are with certainty written by one of them. By adding a ‘v’ (Av, Bv, Cv) Henzel created three extra sections for compositions for which there’s only a shadow of a doubt. The pieces that may undeservedly carry the name of Graun are found in section D. For the so-called Fehlzuschreibungen there is an appendix (Anhang 2).
Unfortunately the catalogue has no index of published Graun-works. That is why I had to physically collect almost all of the Graun-publications in our collection from their storage in order to be able to assign the right thematic number to each composition. With this the index of incipits served me very well, as the information from the publications prooved to be incorrect in most cases.
Prof. Dr. Henzel was helpful to me in identifying a Largo for organ which turned out to be an arranged choral fragment from C.H. Graun’s cantata Der Tod Jesu. The professor thanked me for informing him about a number of Graun-publications that are not indicated in his standard work.
The result of this re-cataloguing is shown here.
LINK:
More information about the thematic catalogues in our collection
